Monday, February 29, 2016

Hans III Jordaens (1590-1643) of Antwerp made both a drawing (now in New York) and a painting (now in Vienna) of the same spacious room set up as a Flemish art gallery. In the spirit of floor-to-ceiling picture-hanging, a group of Flemish pictures from the faraway 17th century appears below. Most are from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

Sunday, February 28, 2016

According to the well-known English philosopher of knowledge and culture Francis Bacon (1561-1626), a learned gentleman should have a "goodly huge cabinet, wherein whatsoever the hand of man by exquisite art or engine hath made rare in stuff, form or motion; whatsoever singularity chance and the shuffle of things hath produced; whatsoever Nature hath wrought in things that want life and may be kept; shall be sorted and included."

Frans Francken IIPicture Gallery
17th centuryprivate collection

Frans Francken II (1581-1642) is the best-remembered individual from a dynasty of Flemish painters that extended across four generations. His range was wide, from the consciously gorgeous, picture-packed interiors of Flemish fellow-citizens and connoisseurs, to outdoor scenes of revelry, to holy narratives set within elevated landscape-visions.

Saturday, February 27, 2016

The abundant world of painted images commemorating the features and wardrobe of Philip IV of Spain (1605-1665) has already been explored here. Above, I add Manet's etching of 1860, a deliberately rough copy of and tribute to Philip IV in Hunting Dress, the well-known informal portrait of 1633 by Diego Velázquez (1599-1660). A whole series of earlier posts also looked at collecting patterns and projects among the many hundreds of paintings acquired in the 1630s for Philip's greater pleasure and glory (here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). The present group was commissioned and painted specifically for the Spanish royal palace expansions of the 1630s

The double portrait immediately above of Emperor Charles V (1500-1558) and his son King Philip II (1527-1598) was a posthumous memorial painted several decades after both were dead.

Juan Andrés RiziDon Tiburcio de Redín
1635Prado

Jusepe de Ribera Allegorical Combat of Women
1636Prado

Giovanni RomanelliGladiators with Wooden Swords
c. 1635-40Prado

Alonso Cano Miracle of the Well
1638-40Prado

Flemish painterLandscape
1630sPrado

Salomon KoninckA Philosopher
1635Prado

Pietro BeatoTwo Philosophers
1630sPrado

Immediately above, a pair of paintings depicting Philosophers at their mental labors. The bent-back and sat-upon volumes seem intended to signify these intangible exertions, elevated above the gross tangible world paper, ink, and vellum. Apparently these terrible heaps, these still-life arrangements of abused books, did not distress the eyes of a seventeenth-century audience. Yet they very much do distress mine.

Francisco CollantesThe Vision of Ezekiel – The Resurrection of the Flesh
1630Prado

Cesare FracanzanoLuchadores
ca. 1637Prado

Cesare FracanzanoDrunken Silenus
1630sPrado

Frans SnydersAquatic Birds with Ermines
1630sPrado

Frans SnydersYoung Woman with Fruit
ca. 1633Prado

Andrea VaccaroSan Gennaro protecting Naples
ca. 1635Prado

I am grateful for the beautiful reproductions made available by Museo del Prado.

Friday, February 26, 2016

attributed to Hendrik van BalenGarland with Cybele and the Seasons
ca. 1615Prado

The tradition of painted floral garlands or guirnaldas, most often surrounding a small image from Christian iconography or pagan mythology, was essentially a Flemish export that reached its most elaborate fulfillment in Baroque-age Spain.

COMRADES OF TIME

"Hesitation with regard to the modern projects mainly has to do with a growing disbelief in their promises. Classical modernity believed in the ability of the future to realize the promises of past and present – even after the death of God, even after the loss of faith in the immortality of the soul. The notion of a permanent art collection says it all: archive, library and museum promised secular permanency, a material infinitude that substituted for the religious promise of resurrection and eternal life. During the period of modernity, the 'body of work' replaced the soul as the potentially immortal part of the Self. . . . But today, this promise of an infinite future holding the results of our work has lost its plausibility. Museums have become the sites of temporary exhibitions rather than spaces for permanent collections. The future is ever newly planned – the permanent change of cultural trends and fashions makes any promise of a stable future for an artwork or a political project improbable."